White the help of (David mullich sir)
The Objectives of game goals
Like just about every other person with a mobile phone this week, I downloaded Pokémon Go and began playing, Gotta catch 'em all! Now that's a very clear goal, so what other properties should a game designer give game objectives besides clarity?
Like just about every other person with a mobile phone this week, I downloaded Pokémon Go, the new augmented reality game allowing players to capture, battle, train, and trade virtual Pokémon who appear throughout the real world. The goal of the game is stated clearly in the franchise's slogan:
Gotta catch 'em all! And as I travelled about this weekend, I would open up the game app and search for Pokémon in the vicinity, pursuing the game's goal of catching as many Pokémon as I could.
Physical
To achieve the game's goals, the player must use some form of physical skills, such as manipulating a game controller deftly or quickly typing the correct key sequence.
Mental
To achieve the game's goals, the player must use some form of strategic skills, such as working out the correct sequence of steps in a logic puzzle game or wisely using resources to build a good balance of combat units.
Randomness
To achieve the game's goals, the player must overcome odds that could cause him or her to lose progress. This might involve the odds of successfully landing a sword blow on a goblin in a role-playing game or of beating an opponent's hand in a gambling game.
Most games involve some combination of these types of goals, although a good game designer will be careful to use just enough randomness to add variety and uncertainty in the game. Too much randomness, and players will feel like their actions and decisions won't matter. One good way to keep your skill level balanced is to ask playtester's how much physical, mental and randomness skills, on a scale from one to five, are required to succeed in your game, and if the results are different from what you expected, you have some tweaking to do
Goals need to be properly adjusted even at the individual level. Ideally, each goal should have the following qualities:
Clear
The player should never be position of not having an objective. The game should always clearly communicate, explicitly or implicitly, what the player's next goal is.Once the player accomplishes one goal, the next goal should be immediately presented to the player.
Obtainable
The player should be provided with enough information and resources to actually achieve each of the game's goals.
Concrete
The player should never be in doubt about whether he or she has achieved the goals in a game. Ideally, the game should provide immediate feedback -- that is, notification of the player's success or failure -- when the player attempts to accomplish a game goal.
Challenging
The player must expend some amount of effort in achieving the goal (unless the game is specifically understood by the player to be a mindless game, designed to simply pass the time with no effort).
Rewarding
The player must find value in accomplishing the goal. Some goals benefit the player within the game's context, such as by advancing the player's progress towards the game's conclusion or revealing more of the game's story.
All of these qualities are essential in keeping the player in a state of flow, the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.
Comments
Post a Comment